Ancient Echoes

by Robert Holdstock

  They struck off through the beechwood, found the path, the kissing gate and then the rough track that wound up the first of the hills, towards the Mallon valley. Garth led the way, his long oilskin coat and heavy leather pack slung over one shoulder, a coil of rope over the other. Jack carried the second grappling hook, and his own knapsack with roast beef sandwiches, two apples and a chunk of game pie.

  At the first summit they gazed over farmland, the river valley itself, and the wooded slopes of Windover Hill, a good hour’s stride away. Garth crouched down and listened to the wind. His face almost shone in the bright sun.

  ‘I know this place so well, now,’ he said. ‘I know the springs, the windbreaks, the snow-shelters, the pipes and caves that riddle the rock.’

  Jack watched the man carefully. Aware of the attention, Garth turned on him, still crouching, then pointed to a clump of trees and a dry-stone wall, half-way down the slope to the winding brook below.

  ‘I’ve lived there for more than a year. There’s a deep crevice, runs a hundred yards into the hill, quite dry. I’ve had some dreams there, some wonderful dreams.’ He laughed. ‘I’m a sort of bear, Jack. I hibernated over the winter to make sure I was in the right place.’

  ‘The right place?’

  Garth stood, stretched, then picked up the rope and his pack.

  ‘It’s been a long hunt, but I’m at the end of the trail, now. I’m sure of it. And it’s partly thanks to you. When I found Glanum, I found my quarry. But it was a long search …’ he added, almost sighing. He stooped quickly and tugged up a small tuft of grass, rubbing the moist earth and roots between his fingers as he again stared down at the boy. ‘I’m going home, Jack. Or I’ll die in the attempt. That’s why I asked you to come with me.’ He put the crushed grass to his nose, closed his eyes as he inhaled briefly, then let it fall.

  ‘But don’t be concerned,’ he added. ‘You’re in no danger yourself. I promise you that.’

  ‘Up on Muldon Moor, you said that I was in trouble.’

  ‘In trouble, yes. But not in danger. If I die, you’ll remember what you’ve seen. If I don’t, I’ll be keeping an eye on you. You’ll always have a friend in me, Jack. Over the years I’ve made that promise many times, and always kept it. Now let’s walk. I’m getting hungry and I can smell that game pie …’

  The game pie?

  ‘That’s my lunch,’ Jack murmured as he followed the man down the hill.

  ‘All supplies to be shared,’ Garth said with a quick, amused glance back.

  She was crouching, watching him, the green patterns on her face writhing like living creatures. Her dark eyes were wide, her expression one of curiosity; and behind her, the man in the cloak of scalps and feathers stood impatiently, his attention on the world around them, his energy concentrated on survival. ‘We have to go …’

  ‘We’re so close …’

  She reached towards him, her fingers brushing his cheek. The earth was shaking; Greyface hunched up slightly, alarmed by what was happening; rocks shuddered and shifted, trees shook, leaves shedding, boughs cracking, the ground itself seemed about to open …

  Jack opened his eyes. Clouds scudded above him, and the tremor in the earth passed away. It was warm, with a light breeze, and he was stretched out on the ground, still sleepy. The shadow of a man passed over him and he sat up, to see Garth pacing restlessly about the hilltop, staring into the distance.

  ‘I fell asleep.’

  The man seemed impatient, silencing him with a gesture, a hiss. ‘It’s close, now. If I say get the hell away, you do just that. Do you understand? You just run. Get out of the hill.’

  ‘I saw Greenface. She said she was close …’

  For a second Garth stared at him, face in shadow, body dark against the bright sky. ‘I expect she is. Was the man with her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Threatening?’

  ‘Worried.’

  The hillside seemed to vibrate. Jack stood up and looked around. They were facing the deep valley. Cloud shadow ran across it. The wind gusted.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘It’s nosing for me. See those trees?’

  Jack looked towards the copse, two hundred yards away. Garth said, ‘You go there, you stay there, among the trees; you simply wait; you hang on, you don’t move. You certainly don’t try to stop me.’ And then he cried out, startling Jack. ‘Look there!’

  ‘What? What is it?’

  Long coat flapping, Garth had started to run along the hill. He was pointing into the distance. ‘There! There it is!’

  Something was moving through the valley. Not cloud shadow, Jack realized, but the land itself, folding, furling, a ripple in the green earth, like wind on water, a pattern, turning to flow towards them.

  ‘Bring the ropes!’

  Jack dragged the heavy coils with their metal hooks and flung them at Garth’s feet. The man stood silently, letting the wind blow at him, his gaze following the wave-motion in the valley.

  ‘It knows I’m here. But I don’t think it recognizes me. This could be dangerous. Back off from me, Jack. Get away from me.’

  ‘I feel strange.’

  Around him, the world was in bright shadow. The earth rumbled, the wind raged, the grass chattered. Looking round, Jack realized that nothing was right, not even the sight of the world. His senses were merging, melding almost, and Garth’s breathing became sonorous, his voice booming as he turned and waved slowly, a hand waving slowly, get away, now, get away.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  The hill seemed to swell below him, the whole world shaking.

  Get away, Jack. Get out of the path. Get to the trees or you’ll be sucked into the wake …

  ‘Garth! What is it?’

  Across the valley, a vast shape moved through the trees, throwing woods and grassy slopes into flowing waves, cutting the land with stone towers and high walls, white features that passed like scythes as they rose above the green, then descended again, vanishing from sight. ‘It’s moving round – to the north. It’s coming up the valley!’

  Garth hauled the ropes as he ran over the ridge, disappearing for a moment, before returning, face wet with effort, brow furrowed. He listened hard, looked round, then seemed to sense something below him. He slowly lengthened the grappling end of one of the ropes, starting to swing it. Jack watched the man, felt the unreal breeze. Everything around him was unnaturally bright. The earth thrummed with movement, a rising and falling vibration that made his legs shake.

  Garth said urgently, ‘You’re standing in two worlds, Jack. What you see is the hunters’ world, unreal in its way, but dangerous. You should back away now. To the trees. And hold on tightly.’

  Jack was about to say something, but he hesitated as the air around him became suddenly still – almost frozen.

  That was when the world exploded behind Garth.

  The walls of the city rose so swiftly and so steeply from the earth that Garth was thrown down. The stone behemoth moved rapidly across the hill, sliding past Jack as he watched open-mouthed. The air was filled with thunder. The walled beast stretched higher into the sky, then plunged again, among a stand of shivering beeches.

  In the few seconds that the city had broken the surface he had seen the shattered walls, the grinning gates, the streaming trails of vine and creeper that swathed the ruins, the bristling roots of twisted trees growing through the stones to form writhing, human shapes upon the white-washed blocks.

  The great tower had moaned as it passed, audible through the thunder, the sonorous echo of wind in a vast chamber, or a deep cave. A dark figure was clinging to its top, peering down at the small creatures below.

  As suddenly as it had reared, the city had gone, and where the earth had been broken there remained no sign of the damage. But below Jack, the world shuddered, the hill threatened to shake itself apart.

  ‘It’s going round!’ Garth shouted.

  He stood up from where he had fallen, brushed at the smea
rs of grass and mud on his clothes and again began to swing the grappling iron.

  ‘Here it comes!’

  He was swinging the iron in a wide loop, his back to the boy. ‘Goodbye, Jack!’

  This time, Glanum came straight at him, breaking the surface of the land, rising steadily towards the man who waited; a great gate gaped, an arched maw with bull’s horns and wide, animal eyes carved deeply in the stone. The tower that guarded the gate shed stones and earth and broken branches. Jack saw statues, dark buildings, pillars and towers within the walls, a ragbag of structures, some dark, like mud, some bright, some white, some swathed in the lush green of a forest.

  At the last minute, as it seemed the city would crush the tiny figure of Garth, it seemed to twist away, diving again at speed, throwing up a billow of rich and stinking earth, scattering trees in the hunters’ land, leaving their shades just visible in the world beyond the dream.

  Garth ran forward and threw the grappling hook, tossing it high on the wall behind the tower, jerked from his feet as the iron grasped the raw stone, swinging wildly against the massive battlement wall. His body was dragged, and he hauled himself along the rope, trying to walk the wall, his raincoat flapping about his bony frame. The city dived, and Garth went down with the descending beast. As he vanished below the hill, he managed to turn and glance at Jack, and he seemed to be shouting something, but he was hanging on for his life and he was soon swallowed.

  For a moment there was silence. Then back along the valley the tower broke the ground, the arch of a gate, the heads of the beasts who guarded it, the red-tiled roofs of several buildings.

  The hill shook one last time.

  Then the air cleared, the strange light dissipated leaving just the blue of the spring sky. Around Jack the earth was as normal, the second rope, Garth’s leather pack, lying exactly where he had flung them.

  After a while, Jack shouldered the pack, but left the rope. He walked to the north along the valley, imagining the wake of the city. By late afternoon he was back at the car, bemused, still stunned by what had happened.

  He sat in the car till dusk, then realizing that his parents would be frantic about his whereabouts, he found a telephone and called them.

  But before he drove carefully back to Exburgh in the rented car, he cried for several minutes, though whether with fear, or confusion, or simply the loss of a friend, he couldn’t tell.

  PART TWO

  Through the Bull Gate

  10

  In the five years since Garth had made his spectacular departure from the world, hauling himself up the wall of the ghost city of Glanum, Jack had more or less come to terms with the experience and had largely ceased to miss the man, although each time he returned home from university he prowled the excavation, or walked the Mallon Hills, hoping to see the grey hair, the flapping coat, the curl of silver smoke.

  No trace of the White Whale remained on the hills where Glanum had manifested itself that day. That Garth had disappeared without trace wasn’t in question – attempts to find him, to piece together a life for the man, proved pointless. He was known for his archaeology, his talent for dowsing, and he had spent time working in Europe. But he was as trackless, as alone in his life, as any mirage.

  What Jack had seen, he had seen, though. The experience was real to him. And although Ruth, the professional, was disinclined to accept the monstrous unlikelihood of a city emerging from the earth to swallow a man, Angela recorded every word, began at once to fit the moving city into a broader Scheme of Things.

  ‘External and internal phenomena,’ she said to him. ‘You can’t equate the two because you assume that you’re the source. But if you are only the channel – if the source is nothing to do with you yourself … then the source may manifest in many sorts of ways.’

  At the end of his final term he had failed to get a place at Cambridge, where he could have worked alongside Angela, and settled instead for Norwich, which at least gave him easy access to his friend. He was reading mathematics – he’d been excellent in the subject at school – but in his second year was bogged down, bored rigid by the reams of theoretical equations, even complaining that he was now confused about long division.

  Time fascinated him, though, and he was a tireless fan of a young, disabled research fellow at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking, and of the wild, wonderful American, Richard Feynman, whom he met twice. Their publications acted as his touchstone to intellectual comfort, his response to them, the worlds of imagination they opened, helping to massage his confidence. A confidence that had recently taken many knocks.

  In their first year apart from each other, Angela had become heavily involved with a robustly athletic New Zealander, a mature student in the Department of Psychology, specializing in Lucid Dreaming. The relationship distressed Jack to the point of distraction and he broke off all contact with Angela. Her new friend introduced her to the delights and disasters of canoeing, a sport which they undertook along the lakes and rivers of central Finland, and the gorges of the Carpathian mountains. Their affair lasted a full twelve months before collapsing, the glamour vanishing as suddenly and startlingly as the cold words – delivered without emotion – froze her heart.

  ‘It’s been fun. But I never commit for more than a year. I’d hoped you’d realized that. I tried to be clear without being … crude?’

  Incensed, she was speechless for an embarrassingly long moment. ‘No. No, I hadn’t. Realized it! You weren’t clear. And it’s exactly a year to the day since we first went out! Did you keep a diary or something?’

  ‘Certainly I kept a diary. I keep a diary of everything I do. How am I to study my own Lucid Dreaming if I don’t have full life reference? Come on, Ang–’

  ‘Oh my God … You shit!’

  ‘Angie– come on. We’re both adults …’

  ‘Shit!’

  Terrified of contacting Jack again, but desperate to do so, she finally found the courage to telephone him, was unsurprised by his coldness and caution, but delighted when he suggested meeting in the woods near Hockley Mere, a place of primordial beauty, timeless, little disturbed by human endeavour. Here, they moved away from the forestry research station that had been their rendezvous, walked for two hours in the stillness of the lakes and woodlands, then drank a warm bottle of Chablis, which Jack had forgotten to enclose in ice packs. It was a hot April day, the whole place in new bud, new life, and Angela cried for a long time.

  ‘I have missed you. I’d just felt there was something missing from us. And he’s going so deeply into the mind – his work’s so challenging … But he was such a bastard …’

  Jack didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to think of the other man, this bright New Zealander. He didn’t even know his name; his heart was still crushed with envy. So he just put his arms around Angela and held her very limply until she moved closer and began to look at him through moist, then more appealing eyes.

  He’d expected her to proposition him, and was already aroused and ready, the last twelve months having been a time of sublime and frustrating failure when it came to making new relationships.

  ‘Shall we meet again?’ she said, then laughed. ‘When shall we two meet again … in Hockley, Exburgh … or in … Spain?’

  This was a modest attempt at humour and Jack responded to it, but he was disappointed since it clearly signalled her intention of returning, imminently, to Cambridge. Jack summoned up the courage to say, ‘Do you want to start seeing me again?’

  ‘Of course,’ Angela said, but she was remote, frowning as she presumably thought of the implications of the idea. ‘Jack, I’m not sure. Not yet. I couldn’t wait to see you, to talk to you, when my life just fell apart. Well, fell apart it seemed. He wasn’t worth it, of course.’ She looked at him fondly. ‘I did want to see you. I never wanted to lose touch.’

  ‘Kiss me.’

  She hesitated, then acceded, and he held her for a long time, even though she’d broken the kiss after a few seconds.

&nb
sp; Chancing his luck he said, ‘If you come back to me, I’ll not let you go again.’

  ‘That sounds like a threat.’

  ‘It isn’t. Just don’t come back to me unless you’re sure. I need you very much. I love you. I’m sorry I never told you before.’

  ‘It must have been hell for you. Steve was …’

  ‘I don’t want to know the bastard’s name. I just want you. Come back to me – but please! Only if you’re sure.’

  She was slightly startled. She agreed silently, then added, ‘I know I’m going to be sure. Give me a few weeks, that’s all. Just a few weeks. But Jack … you have to come to Cambridge. Steve’s been doing – sorry … The Department of Psychology are doing some really interesting stuff with dreaming and a new thing, computer generated Virtual Reality. It’s going to be big. It’s going to change lives! And it might be a way of getting a visual record of the bull-runners.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about this now …’

  ‘No, of course not. I understand. But have you seen them recently?’

  ‘They’re around. They’ve not presented any primary visions, not for a long while. I really don’t want to talk about that. OK?’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I don’t want to talk about anything but us.’

  She grinned over her shoulder. ‘As I said to you once before, you’re my life’s work. I’ll be keeping my eye on you!’

  ‘You and John Garth both, it seems.’

  11

  Years had passed, years of inner silence, years of change. In the early summer, to celebrate his twenty-eighth birthday, Jack took Angela and their five year old daughter, Natalie, to a ‘surprise’ location in France, an old farmhouse in the mountainous Perigord region, ramshackle but fully equipped, and with turkeys (noisy and disgustingly messy), hens (noisy but egg-laying) and small black-spotted pigs (clean, quiet, but unwelcomingly curious) as their garden companions. The farm belonged to a work colleague of his, a man in his fifties with no family commitments who had bought the small house years before, visited the place for two weeks every year, and otherwise took pleasure in ‘lending’ it to friends for their own holidays.